


this is how you know i love you

by redluxite (wordstruck)



Series: VLD One-Shots [14]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Declarations Of Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-S6, Season 6 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 17:31:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14938745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordstruck/pseuds/redluxite
Summary: He parts his lips, tries to say Keith’s name. What escapes is a hoarse wisp of noise. His mouth feels dry, his voice unused. He coughs.Keith startles at the noise, hand instinctively closing over Shiro’s as he sits up. He looks around himself, alarmed, before his gaze settles back on Shiro.“Shiro.”Keith surges upwards, reaching to press frantic fingers to the pulse at Shiro’s throat, to the line of his brow. And Shiro would honestly reply, say Keith’s name or tell him I’m okay, but his eyes are so heavy and he’s still so tired.(But they’re okay. Keith’s okay. They made it.)(A post-S6 reunion fic.)





	this is how you know i love you

**Author's Note:**

> This is how I process my emotions after the season drop – by writing them into a fic. It leaves a lot of things out, I know, but this is really mostly just a reflection on Shiro and Keith's relationship and a whole lotta feelings. 
> 
> Also, the lyrics from It's Only Me by Dessa (found at the start of the fic) are _so freaking Sheith_ and are largely what inspired this fic. I literally wrote this like, an hour after we finished watching so this is mostly un-beta'd. I'll adjust things in retrospect.
> 
> Written for paladiens, brighteststarus, and akaowlshi. And for me, because I'm still here lying in a gutter waiting for a truck to run me over but also I could scream forever.

* * *

 

 _i didn’t come to play it safe,_ _  
_ _i came to win or lose with you_

 

The first thing Shiro sees when he opens his eyes is blue.

It’s a hazy, shallow blue. Soft. Shiro thinks, dazedly, that it reminds him of the ocean.

There’s a voice, at the edge of his hearing. It’s warm and painfully familiar.

 _You’re gonna be okay,_ the voice is telling him, and as Shiro sinks back into the blanket of unconsciousness, he finds he believes it.

 

When Shiro next opens his eyes, the blue is still there.

Then he blinks, and a shape is hovering over him.

“Shiro?”

Blink again, and Keith comes into focus – except it’s also not Keith, he’s different. Shiro takes in the burn up his right cheek, the longer hair, the tired eyes. He’s different but he’s Keith, and something eases inside Shiro’s chest.

Careful fingers touch his cheek, reverent and light.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Keith says, and there’s a smile somewhere in his eyes and the quirk of his mouth.

Shiro would reply, but he’s already falling back asleep.

 

He next comes around surrounded by darkness and grey, and a warm pressure on his left hand. He blinks, adjusting to the lack of light. Very slowly, he turns his head to the left, just a little.

Keith’s head dents the mattress by Shiro’s thigh, hair falling over his face. He’s got one hand curled around Shiro’s.

Shiro just watches him for a while, taking it all in. He’s alive, they’re both alive and okay and together. They made it. Keith’s found him.

He parts his lips, tries to say Keith’s name. What escapes is a hoarse wisp of noise. His mouth feels dry, his voice unused. He coughs.

Keith startles at the noise, hand instinctively closing over Shiro’s as he sits up. He looks around himself, alarmed, before his gaze settles back on Shiro.

“ _Shiro._ ” Keith surges upwards, reaching to press frantic fingers to the pulse at Shiro’s throat, to the line of his brow. And Shiro would honestly reply, say Keith’s name or tell him _I’m okay,_ but his eyes are so heavy and he’s still so tired.

(But they’re okay. Keith’s okay. They made it.)

 

The next time Shiro wakes up, the blue is back and he feels so much lighter.

He blinks, bringing the room around him into focus. The blue becomes a sky, blurred slightly by the glass of a skylight above him. Blink again and the walls emerge in his peripheral vision, a soft grey. Blink again and touch registers: the softness of sheets and blankets; the cool air around him.

There’s a rustle to his left. Shiro carefully turns his head again.

Keith’s in a large red armchair, dressed casually – the first time Shiro can remember seeing him in his jacket and boots, in what feels like years. He’s sitting sideways, legs slung over one arm of the chair and back leaning against the other. There’s a tablet in his lap, and a tiny furrow in his brow as he scrolls through something on the screen.

His hair’s too long and a right mess, the burn is there on his cheek, his clothes are all rumpled, and he looks absolutely exhausted.

He’s the best thing Shiro’s ever seen in his entire life.

Shiro licks his lips, inhales and exhales. Swallows.

“Keith.”

It comes out raspy and mangled, but it’s still Keith’s name and the shock of it goes through the boy in the chair like a lightning strike. The tablet clatters to the floor as Keith gets up, staring at Shiro with wide eyes.

“Hey,” Keith says, so carefully. He walks to Shiro’s bedside in an obvious show of self-restraint, touching fingers to Shiro’s pulse again, his brow. There’s worry in his expression, but something soft, too. “Feeling okay?”

“Felt better,” Shiro admits, shutting his eyes. Even two words takes a phenomenal amount of effort, like they’re physically scratching his throat. When he opens his eyes again, Keith’s holding a cup and a straw, bringing them to Shiro’s mouth.

Water has never tasted so good.

He drinks carefully, trying not to overwhelm himself. Keith’s hands are gentle as they support his head; he slides a calloused thumb over Shiro’s lips to wipe the drips away. Shiro fights to keep his focus, to keep Keith in his sight.

He definitely looks older; bigger, somehow. Like he takes up more of the room. There’s something new to the line of his shoulders and the set of his jaw. Shiro’s eyes keep being drawn back to the scar on his right cheek, a harsh cut from jaw to ridge. It looks like the scar over the bridge of his own nose.

The silence hangs between them for a few moments, weighted and weary. Shiro doesn’t know where to begin – he can barely remember anything at the moment, beyond the fact that Keith is here with him and they’re both somehow alive.

He settles for something generic. “What happened?”

He doesn’t expect Keith to hesitate, but Keith does. His mouth pinches, gaze flicking to the side. When he meets Shiro’s eyes again, his expression is unreadable. “What happened when?” he asks, and if Shiro didn’t know him better he’d say Keith was being wary.

(But he _does_ know Keith better, knows Keith best out of anyone in his life. He doesn’t know why Keith is looking at him like he’s afraid of something.)

“I…” Shiro trails off, eyes scrunching shut against the onslaught of a formidable headache and a bone-numbing exhaustion. He can feel Keith immediately start forward, easing his head into a more comfortable position.

“Easy,” Keith murmurs, smoothing the hair back from Shiro’s brow. “Get your rest.”

Shiro tries to open his eyes again, but something soft touches his forehead. Keith’s breath ghosts over his brow.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Shiro falls asleep.

 

This time, when he wakes up, there’s a space wolf on his bed.

Shiro has a stare-off with the wolf as Keith putters around the room, drawing the thicker drapes open but leaving the thinner clothes covering the windows. Light pours down on them through the skylight; Shiro looks at the blue sky above them that’s the color of the shallow sea, something that nags at the edge of memory. Keith brings him another cup of water, the wolf wags its tail and whines.

Keith scratches the wolf’s ears. The wolf makes a happy noise. Shiro drinks his water and tries not to feel like everything is surreal.

“What’s its name?” he asks, when he’s finished the glass. Keith takes it back and sets it on a nearby table.

“Who – oh.” He leans forward and strokes a hand down the wolf’s back. “Bayard.”

It takes a moment to get through. “You named your space wolf… Bayard.”

Keith looks up, defensive. “It’s a reasonable name.”

Shiro hastily rearranges his expression into something he hopes resembles agreement. “Right. Yes. Good name.” He looks back at the wolf. “Hello… Bayard.”

Bayard yips. Keith smirks.

“Picked him up on the back of a space whale.”

Shiro resists the urge to look at the ceiling. Of course Keith adopted a space wolf from a space whale. (Though if he’s honest, it’s one of the _less_ weird things that’s happened since they were blasted into outer space.)

It’s when he starts to reach out for the wolf that the realization breaks through the haze he’s been under since he’d first woken up.

Slowly, mechanically, Shiro turns his head to the right.

“Keith,” he says in an odd voice, as he looks and realizes that his arm—

Keith moves slowly, telegraphing his every motion as he sits at the edge of Shiro’s bed and places a hand on his thigh. There’s too much to pick apart in his expression – pain and sympathy and grief and a host of other emotions that Shiro can’t even begin to comprehend.

He _is_ older, Shiro realizes as he searches Keith’s face. Older, more grown, more weary. The scar keeps dragging Shiro’s gaze back and back.

His heart thuds hollow in his chest. Keith takes a breath.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

 

Keith tells him everything, in quiet words and hesitations. About Lotor; about Haggar and Sendak and Zarkon’s death. About the rest of the team, about Allura and the loss of the Castle. About his mother, Krolia, and their mission to the space/time rift, and the surviving Alteans. About the Black Lion.

About the fight.

In between, in the pauses for breath or for composure or for words (so many words, and Keith’s never been big on talking or laying himself out so raw but he talks and talks, gives Shiro everything) – in all this, Shiro thinks about what he himself remembers. Being imprisoned on the astral plane, tethered only by his ties to the Black Lion and to Keith. Seeing, _hearing_ Keith in the Lion – his defiance, his desperation, his quiet, quiet grief. Flashes of consciousness from his alter-self, from when the clone had taken the Black Lion. Calling out to the team when they’d projected to the astral plane, only the connection hadn’t been strong enough. Keith, in the Lion. Keith.

Shiro looks at the boy who’d chased across galaxies to find him, who’d been ready to give up anything and everything to get him back. He thinks of everything Keith had gone through up to now, the loss and sacrifice and suffering. He thinks of Keith’s simple, unwavering faith that Shiro would come back to him, time and time again.

(He thinks of his own faith, as he’d waited on the astral plane, waited like Keith had quietly waited months on end for Shiro to come home.)

The revelation of that kind of devotion – it shakes him to his bones.

Shiro looks at Keith and thinks he doesn’t quite know how to begin repaying that.

The thought makes him laugh, a clipped and honest sound that surprises even him.

“What’s so funny?” Keith asks, frowning. He’s got one hand curled in Bayard’s fur; the wolf had fallen asleep across their laps a long while ago. Shiro reaches out and runs a hand over Bayard’s head. His fingers brush lightly over Keith’s.

“Nothing,” Shiro says. It isn’t funny, it’s really not, and his chest tightens as everything starts to sink in. He’d been halfway to death for – for _months,_ trapped on another plane of reality while something with his name and face and memories had almost broken his team. He’d nearly been lost when Allura had taken his soul from the Black Lion and returned him to his body. He’d fought and almost – almost—

Shiro’s eyes snap back to the scar on Keith’s face as the splinters and ice crackle in his lungs.

“I did that to you,” he realizes, and _oh._ All the things he’d done, he’d _said,_ everything he’d never wanted—

“Shiro–”

“I would have killed you,” Shiro says, quietly, and the words are a hollow rattle in his throat.

 _Would have,_ not might have, not could have.

Keith doesn’t say no.

Shiro shuts his eyes, wanting to hide, wanting to shrink away under the guilt and the terror. He knows those actions hadn’t been his but it doesn’t stop the shame from welling up anyway. He knows he’s not at fault for any of this, he knows, he _knows—_

“Shiro.” Warm palms come up to cradle his face, holding him so gently, and _god_ Shiro has been so starved for touch and affection and human contact, for _anything_ to confirm he’s still real and here. He leans into the touch and something inside him irrevocably shatters even as he understands that Keith has been here and will be here all this time to help piece him back together. The first sob is ripped out of him like it’s being uprooted from his very soul, and Shiro crumples under the weight of everything that’s happened and the realization that he hasn’t been lost.

And as in everything, Keith holds him up.

They sit there for interminable moments, Shiro crying and Keith simply sitting there, stroking his hair and making soft shushing noises. Keith’s a solid, warm weight against him, half in his lap, pressed chest to chest so that Shiro can feel him breathing. A tether and a grounding force, firebright and fierce and all things Shiro loves so dearly.

 _God,_ but Shiro loves this boy.

When the grief abates enough that breathing doesn’t feel like a knife in his chest, Shiro pulls back just a little and raises tentative fingers to the scar on Keith’s cheek. Keith’s expression shutters, but he doesn’t pull away. Shiro traces the line of the scar from cheek to jaw, then down the curve of Keith’s throat, over to where he knows the scar from the trials cuts across a slender shoulder. Keith sits there and breathes and lets him touch.

There are too many things Shiro wants to say, things like _I would have forgiven you if you hadn’t saved me_ and _I can’t even begin to say thank you_ and _I love you, I love you, I love you._ But the words get stuck in his lungs when he looks up and sees Keith watching him. Their gazes meet and Shiro can see all the same overwhelming emotions in Keith’s eyes.

(After all this time, after everything that’s happened, Keith’s eyes still remind Shiro of the irresistible pull of the cosmos. Keith still reminds Shiro of a galaxy, all things bright and uncontainable.

And still, Shiro knows he’ll let himself be drawn in time and time again. Keith’s magnetic that way.)

Bayard grumbles and wakes up, shifting off their laps and onto the floor. Shiro curves his hand around the back of Keith’s head and leans forward carefully, touching their foreheads together. He smiles.

“You’re really gonna keep saving me, huh,” he murmurs.

It startles a laugh out of Keith. It’s the most beautiful sound Shiro’s ever heard.

“I promised, didn’t I?” Keith lifts his hand, closes it in a fist over the thud of Shiro’s heart. “As many times as it takes.”

 

This time, late in the night, it’s Shiro awake and watching Keith sleep. There are new lines at the corners of his eyes, and a tiny furrow in his brow that Shiro can’t quite smooth out no matter how much he cards his fingers through Keith’s hair. There’s so much Shiro has to learn and relearn about him, so much he has to figure out. There’s so much he’s missed.

But that is for a later time. In the here and now, Keith is still with him, slumbering quietly tucked up against Shiro, soft in ways he still only lets Shiro see. In the here and now they are together, have come back together. Keith’s found him.

Shiro’s never been a religious person, and his time in space has disabused him of less scientific beliefs in things like fate or chance. But as he looks at Keith now, he can half-remember bits and pieces of stories from growing up. _Bone of my bones,_ one person made whole out of another. He looks at Keith and wonders about the parts of himself that had coalesced only after finding and falling in love with this beautiful boy. About the edges of them that fit together, no matter how far they’d come from the cadet and junior officer at the Garrison.

Shiro may not believe in fate or chance, but he still thanks the universe for whatever forces out there had brought Keith into his life.

There is so much he has to learn and relearn and make up for, but this is where Shiro starts—

“I will come back to you,” he tells the quiet and the night and the boy in bed beside him. “Wherever we go, whatever comes our way, I will come back to you.”

No matter what it takes.

 

(When Keith wakes and his eyes search for Shiro, and Shiro smiles at him—

“I love you,” Shiro says, and that’s where he starts giving back.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! I can't wait to see everyone else's fic and fanart post-S6 bc holy _wow_ we got So Much and I'm honestly still floored. VLD _really_ brought their A-game to this season; I'm absolutely blown away.
> 
> Anyway!! Come say hi on social media! I'm on Twitter as [@okw_tr](https://twitter.com/okw_tr) and Tumblr as [okwtr](https://okwtr.tumblr.com). You can check there for ways to support my writing ^__^


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